Social media brings endless concerns for parents, with worries that it weakens their children’s confidence and attention spans. But others counter that it could also be broadening their horizons.

The latest round of worry was sparked by a study of the impact of social media use on 8-12-year-olds published by Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England. The report focused on 132 children, who described pressures from constant contact, online comments that weaken their self-esteem, and the need to shape offline activities to make them shareable.

“You see your friends going ice skating, partying or talking about how much revision they have done, and it can make you feel inadequate,” says Bea, a junior school student from Bristol, UK. “It’s just so hard to get away from it.”

Children have to take risks on their journeys to adulthood, and desires to fit in and be popular existed before Mark Zuckerberg came along with Facebook. However, in previous generations these pressures came largely from people they knew, and they mostly stayed outside the home. Now the pressures could come from any one of the nearly 3 billion people online, and follow them from school to home, and can even continue through the night.

The pressures do get on parents’ nerves, among which the utmost concern is how their children can be protected from harm, given that social media is a necessary way of interaction for many young people. According to Longfield’s study, children should be taught about online safety from an early age, better before secondary school. There is growing evidence that efforts need to be extended to provide earlier guidance on less extreme but more common risks, including over-sharing, low self-esteem, addiction and insomnia. The evidence suggests she is right. However, approaches that focus merely on the potential negatives are unlikely to work.

“My school has tried to do a lot, but it often involves trying to drill into us how bad social media can be,” says Bea. “People of my age really like social media, so I think a better approach would be if they said ‘Although it is good, here are some negatives’.”

Is there any evidence to show that the standard of English as a foreign language has improved in the years since the Second World War? Naturally, as it is the world language, more and more people are taught it and use it. But do they speak it or write it or understand it better than their parents’ or grandparents’ generation?

There seems to be no objective way of answering this question. Tests of the traditional sort—compositions, summary writing, and so on—have always been subjective, so they cannot be used to judge whether people have got a better command of English or not over the years. But so-called objectives tests are useless as a measure of progress too. They have not been used consistently (一贯地) in the same “concentration” over the period they have been in use, so there is no way of comparing exams “now” and “then”. Moreover, usually in the form of multiple choice questions, they do not test the things that really count in mastering a language. Even comprehension is a partly “creative” activity in real life, as we have to think of possible meanings for ourselves rather than have them suggested for us from outside. And people can be trained in the techniques of multiple choice, while others fail the tests because they have been led astray (离开正道) by their “suggestive” nature, so they are not really objective at all. We are left with only personal impression to go on.

My own view is that, if anything, standards have declined in the last thirty or forty years, despite all the new theories, tools and techniques that have been developed. I am not alone in this judgement. In Sweden, for instance, Professors Johannes Hedberg and Gustav Korlen, two of the most experienced workers in the field, have drawn attention to the lack of progress in the teaching of foreign languages since the late fifties. Yet Sweden is a sophisticated (先进的) society with extremely high educational and academic standards, and very concerned not to be cut off from the rest of the world. If such a country cannot achieve advances in the study of foreign languages, it is unlikely that many others have done so.

Japan is another community where little progress has been made in the learning of English. It is probably as important for Japan as for Sweden to master that language, and there is much academic effort put into linguistic research of various kinds. Yet the average standard of language learning is terribly low, particularly for such a highly educated society. This is no doubt in part the result of a vicious circle (恶性循环) : Many of the professors of English at Japanese universities are themselves unable to speak or write or even understand the language well.

As we continue to explore farther out into our solar system and beyond, the question of humans living on other planets often comes up. Manned bases on the Moon or Mars for example, have long been a dream of many. There is a natural desire to explore as far as we can go, and also to extend humanity’s presence on a permanent (永久的) or at least semi-permanent basis. In order to do this, however, it is necessary to adapt to different extreme environments. On the Moon for example, a colony must be self-sustaining (自立的) and protect its inhabitants from the airless, harsh environment outside.

Mars, though, is different. While future bases could adapt to the Martian environment over time there is also the possibility of modifying (改变) the surrounding environment instead of just co-existing with it. This is the process of terraforming (地球化)—adjusting Mars’ atmosphere and environment to make it more Earth-like. But the bigger question is, should we?

One of the main issues is whether Mars has any native life or not and if it does, should it be preserved (保护) as much as possible? If the answer is yes, then large-scale human settlements on Mars should be completely off-limits. Small colonies might be fine, but living on Mars should not be at the expense of any native habitats, if they exist. If Mars is home to any indigenous life, then terraforming should be a non-issue; it simply should not be done.

What if Mars is lifeless? Even if no life exists there, that untouched and unique alien environment needs to be preserved as it is as much as possible. We’ve already done too much damage here on our own planet. By studying Mars and other planets and moons in their current natural state, we can learn so much about their history and also learn more about our own world. We should appreciate the differences of other worlds instead of just transforming them to suit our own ambitions.